This paper studies the information interpretation of return synchronicity in the context of corporate bond market and examines the specific event intensity rationale that underlie the relationship between bond synchronicity and bond level information environment. We find that investment-grade bonds, bonds without rating splits, and bonds issued by public firms present higher levels of bond return synchronicity. These results hold after we control for bond level characteristics, industry and year fixed effects. By using credit rating change announcements as a unique measure of bond specific event intensity, we corroborate that security under better information environment has lower likelihood of specific event surprise occurrence, and thus is more synchronous with the market. We also verify that once rating change announcements did take place, the corresponding return synchronicity would be lower. Such impact would be more pronounced when the rating is downgraded compared with upgrade rating changes.

Using a proprietary dataset from 2016 to 2019, we find that order flows from foreign investors, facilitated by regulatory liberalization through several channels, present strong predictive power for future stock returns in the Chinese market. Most surprisingly, foreign investors possess the ability to process local firm-level public news, whereas their informational advantages regarding global market-level information are relatively muted. Further, the predictive power of foreign investors is particularly strong on large price movement days when the implications of firm-level information is likely most pronounced. Finally, regulatory reforms that generally relax investment access requirements further improve foreign investors’ predictive power

We examine how sell-side equity analysts strategically disclose information of differing quality to the public versus the buy-side mutual fund managers to whom they are connected. We consider cases in which analysts recommend that the public buys a stock, but some fund managers sell it. We measure favor trading using mutual fund managers’ votes for analysts in a Chinese “star analyst” competition. We find that managers are more likely to vote for analysts who exhibit more “say-buy/whisper-sell” behavior with these managers. This suggests that analysts introduce noise in their public recommendations, making the more-precise information provided to their private clients more valuable. Analysts’ say-buy/whisper-sell behavior results in information asymmetry: the positive-recommendation stocks bought by the managers who vote for the analysts outperform the stocks sold by these managers after the recommendation dates. Our findings help explain several puzzles regarding analysts’ public recommendations.

We document a novel platform effect caused by the emergence of FinTech platforms in financial intermediation. In China, platform distributions of mutual funds emerged in 2012 and grew quickly into a formidable presence. Utilizing the staggered entrance of funds onto platforms, we find a marked increase of performance-chasing, driven by the centralized information flow unique to FinTech platforms. This pattern is further confirmed using proprietary data from a top platform. Examining the platform impact on fund managers, we find that, incentivized by the amplified performance-chasing, fund managers increase risk taking to enhance their probability of getting onto the top ranking.

Exploiting staggered COVID-19 lockdowns and reopening across different regions in China, we study how lockdowns affect the investment decisions of venture capital (VC) investors and whether such changes are temporary or enduring in the post-pandemic era. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that lockdowns exacerbate the “tyranny of distance” (i.e., VCs avoid investing in remote ventures), our findings suggest the “death of distance”: VCs invest in remoter ventures during a lockdown and such effects persist even after the economy reopens. Such lockdown effects are more pronounced when there is better internet infrastructure, when the level of information asymmetry between VCs and entrepreneurs is lower, and when VCs are more experienced. The lockdown effects can be explained by the advancement and adoption of remote communication technology as a response to the social distancing requirements. As geographic boundaries of VC investment are shattered by remote communication technology, local competition among VCs has been intensified, the monopoly power of VCs has been curtailed, and the regional inequality of entrepreneurial access to VC financing has been mitigated.

We examine the impact of mixed ownership on the performance of venture capital (VC) firms in China. We use successful/unsuccessful exits from VC-financed entrepreneurial companies and number of patent applications by VC-financed companies as proxies for VC firms’ performance. Consistent with existing research on the inferior performance of SOEs relative to non-SOEs, we find that on average government-controlled VC firms (GVCs) underperform domestic private investors-controlled VC firms (PVCs). More importantly, we find that introducing minority private investors (i.e., mixed ownership) helps improve the performance of GVCs. However, we find no evidence that introducing minority government investors (i.e., mixed ownership) helps improve the performance of PVCs. Our results provide relevant information to the ongoing debate on the role of the government investors and private investors in developing the VC industry in emerging markets.

In recent years, with the rapid expansion of commercial banks' non-standardized business, the systematic correlation between shadow banking and commercial banks in China has been gradually enhanced, which enables the partial liquidity crisis of shadow banking to spread rapidly to commercial banks, leading to the increased vulnerability of China's financial system. Based on this, we built shadow banking indexes of trusts, securities, private lending and investment, introduced the dynamic correlation coefficient calculated by the dynamic conditional correlation multivariate GARCH model into the improved CoVaR model, and used the DCC-BEKK-MVGARCH-Time-Varying CoVaR Model to measure the risk overflow contribution of shadow banking in China. We find that shadow banking and commercial banks have an inherent relationship. Due to their own risks, different types of shadow banking contribute to the risk spillover to commercial banks in different degrees. The risk correlation between shadow banking and commercial banks fluctuates.

摘 要:在中国金融市场中，中小微民营企业遭遇了银行业来自公有制和市场的双重信贷配给约束，出现了 明显的二次信贷现象。融资相对容易的非金融上市公司从银行低利率借款，然后高利率转贷给遭遇银行信贷配给 约束的中小微企业以赚取利差，从事实质性的信用中介活动。本文依据传统“融资优序”理论与信贷配给理论， 基于 2007—2018 年中国上市公司财务报表数据，研究中国非金融上市公司的二次信贷(Borrow to Lend)影子银 行活动。实证结果表明，中国非金融上市公司尤其是国企及大型民企存在明显的二次信贷活动，且公司个体及所 在行业的实体经济回报率与二次信贷活动呈现反向变动关系。本文运用 M2 增速的外生增长部分作为货币政策松 紧的度量，实证结果表明在金融危机后国有企业二次信贷活动与货币政策松紧同向变动，验证了信贷调控的货币 政策对中国非金融上市公司的二次信贷活动有影响。本文提供了企业信用中介活动顺信贷周期特点的新证据，对 于推动信贷资源配置的公平与效率，遏制实体经济“脱实向虚”有较强政策意义。

人才是第一生产力，特别是在党中央提出国家中长期人才发展规划纲要之后，如何“识才”、“用才”更成为学术界研究的一个热点课题。本文手工整理2002-2015年共计3730位公司CEO的详细个人简历信息，构建高管“通才指数”，研究CEO通才指数如何影响企业的并购行为及并购绩效。研究发现：（1）相比单纯职业经历的CEO（专才型CEO）而言，复合职业经历的CEO（通才型CEO）更擅长主导并购活动——通才型CEO发起的并购活动更为频繁，该结论在通过Heckman两阶段自选择模型、PSM样本回归、考察CEO变更事件、通才指数的不同构建方法、控制CEO天赋等一系列稳健性检验后依旧成立。（2）通才型CEO所开展的跨行业和跨地域并购更为频繁，且更多地涉及其过去任职过的行业或地域。（3）通才型CEO主导的并购活动可以获得更好的短期市场反应和长期绩效，这主要源自通才型CEO在并购完成后吸纳了更多的金融机构股东、强化了银企关系并聘用了更多具有政治关系的独立董事。进一步研究发现：通才型CEO具有更高的风险承担偏好，促使其敢于发起包括企业并购在内的高风险决策。这些研究结论不仅拓展了高管个人工作经历如何影响公司财务行为的研究，对于企业如何选才、用才，以提高企业并购效率、促进企业发展也具有重要的现实意义。

We examine the effects of controlling shareholder stock pledge on corporate acquisition decisions and associated performance. Consistent with our aggravated expropriation hypothesis, we find that pledging firms in China initiate more takeovers, but these acquisitions conducted by pledging firms experience lower announcement returns. We adopt the difference in differences and the instrumental variable approaches to establish causality. Channel tests further reveal that pledging acquirers overpay for the deals and are more likely to be involved in related party transactions. Cross-sectionally, we find that the relations between the share pledge and corporate acquisitiveness and returns are more pronounced for non-SOEs and firms with high-level excess cash. Lastly, we document that pledging acquirers underperform in the long-run in terms of lower ROAs and a greater likelihood of goodwill impairment. Overall, our findings indicate that controlling shareholders increasingly expropriate minority shareholders through self-serving corporate takeovers after the stock pledge.